Guardian Eco publishes an interview with Raj Pachauri, which very surprisingly returns to the subject of the melting of Himalayan glaciers.

The [IPCC] report included an estimate that "if the present rate [of melting] continues, the likelihood of them disappearing by the year 2035 and perhaps sooner is very high (IPCC-speak for 90 percent-plus likely) if the earth keeps warming at the current rate." This prediction came from a 1999 magazine interview with India's leading glaciologist, Syad Iqbal Hasnain, not an article in a peer-reviewed journal.

So, yes, a small lapse, and within 24 hours the IPCC had acknowledged it. But how significant was the error? It happened that I had interviewed Hasnain in New Delhi in 2009; he told me that he had slightly modified his projections on the basis of new data compiled over the intervening decade. What he said now was, "If the current trends continue, within 30 to 40 years most of the glaciers will melt out." It was hard to be more precise, he said, because so much of the affected region in India, Pakistan, and Tibet is off-limits to researchers for national security reasons. So most of the glaciers are very likely to be gone by 2040 to 2050, rather than all the glaciers are very likely to be gone by 2035.

If I were one of the 1.5 billion Asians whose future survival depends on meltwater from the Himalayas, I'm not sure I'd grasp the fine distinction.

Now, my understanding is that even on the inflated IPCC estimates, the correct figure is 2350, not 2040 or 2050. If so, then the Guardian's decision to publish this is...astonishing.

Reader Comments (59)

& "within 24 hours the IPCC had acknowledged it". In fact it took tears.

The Guardian run a section where they boast of correcting errors, usually such minor ones as that a runwayb is 3007 feet rather than 3000 so clearly the entire article will be loudlt apologised for. Either that or it will be maintained as both the very highest standatrd of honesty to which the Grainiad ever aspoitre and a total heap of steaming crap of a level of dishonesty Goebbels would have been ashamed of.

Your GraceDurban is barely weeks away.The Guardian is fully signed up to all catastrophic and anthropogenic aspects of global warming.The (il)liberal pseudo-intellectuals — whose house magazine the Guardian is — have always believed that the ends justify the means.And you find this astonishing?

Sci-American: New Research Casts Doubt on Doomsday Water Shortage Predictions [glaciers]http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=research-casts-doubt-doomsday-water-shortage-predictions

Some great quotes from various scientists (including Peter Gleick) in Scientific American:

He agreed that overstatements about the impacts are rampant in the Himalayas as well, saying, “The idea that 1.4 billion people are going to be without water when the glaciers melt is just not the case.

The quote in Scientific American, from Peter Gleick sound perfectly reasonable…….—————————–Creeping hyperbole“There has been a lot of misinformation and confusion about it,” said Peter Gleick​, co-director of the California-based Pacific Institute for Studies in Development, Environment and Security. “About 1.3 billion people live in the watersheds that get some glacier runoff, but not all of those people depend only on the water from those watersheds, and not all the water in those watersheds comes from glaciers. Most of it comes from rainwater,” he said.—————————–

Gordon Brown PM:“There are now fewer than 50 days to set the course for the next few decades’

“If we do not reach a deal over the next few months, let us be in no doubt”

“Once the damage from unchecked emissions growth is done, no retrospective global agreement in some future period can undo that choice, by then it will be irretreivably too late....we should never allow ourselves to lose site of the catastrophy we face, if present warming trends continue…..”

“In 25 years the glaciers that provide water for 3/4 of a billion people could disapear entirely”

Where all these scientists were 2 years ago, when politicians were spouting off like Gordon Brown to the world’s media…. is of course another question…

Why were they not correcting these hugely high profil public announcements of ‘water shortgages’ that afftected hundreds of millions of people in a few short years…

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What on earth the Guardian is doing by stating by 2040-50 is almost beyond belief..

"In Peru's Rio Santa, which drains the Cordilleras Blanca mountain range, glacier contribution appears to be between 10 and 20 percent. In the eastern Himalayas, it is less than 5 percent.

"If anything, that's probably fairly large," said Richard Armstrong, a senior research scientist at the Boulder, Colo.-based Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES), who studies melt impact in the Himalayas.

"Most of the people downstream, they get the water from the monsoon," Armstrong said. "It doesn't take away from the importance [of glacier melt], but we need to get the science right for future planning and water resource assessments."

Those aren't messages that environmental activists will likely find easy to hear. Armstrong recalled giving a presentation in Kathmandu on his early findings to a LESS THAN APPRECIATIVE AUDIENCE.

"I didn't agree with the doomsday predictions, and I didn't have anything that was anywhere near spectacular," Armstrong said. But, he added, "At the same time, it's just basic Earth science, and we want to do a better job than we have been."

I live about 1km away from the Danube. I have cycled from Rotterdam to Bucharest along the Rhine and Danube.

Not many glaciers left in the Alps, but there is certainly plenty of melt water come spring/summer. So with all this increased precipitation we hear about, the Himalayas will not be providing any snow on high ground?

The report is, to put it mildly, well-timed, after this year's freakish sequence of extreme weather events,

So there are the glaciers in a steady state. The amount of water arriving in a year equals the amount of water leaving. The volume of the glaciers themselves is pretty immaterial to this equation. They coudl be utterly stupendous, or mnegligible. It doesn't affect the flow.

If the glaciers start melting thne - while the melting is going on, the amount of runoff water is temporarily increased, only to return to the earlier level when there is nothing left to melt.

The only factor that overall affects the flow of water is how much rain/snow arrives, not how much has been previously stored.

Have I missed something important? Because if not this is 11-plus level maths for a bath with a tap and a plughole.

Pachauri: "...I don't think he [Jairam Ramesh] has any business questioning a body that established its credentials over the last 21 years..."

Question: Are you not willing to examine the Indian Ministry's report and see if there is any meeting point etc?

Pachauri: "No. I will not sit down with the minister. I sit down with the minister very often,..he is a good friend of mine. But what I'll like to say is that, if this report is solid then publish it, ...let it go through a peer-review process. It can't be on the basis of two individuals [Ramesh and Raina], the minister and whoever's written this report, deciding on something that is so complex.You know, we are trivialising the science."

If the glaciers start melting thne - while the melting is going on, the amount of runoff water is temporarily increased, only to return to the earlier level when there is nothing left to melt.

The only factor that overall affects the flow of water is how much rain/snow arrives, not how much has been previously stored.

Have I missed something important? Because if not this is 11-plus level maths for a bath with a tap and a plughole.

No that is my understanding too, the glaciers act as a dam, while the dam empties the flow is increased, once the dams are gone the flow returns to normal. The only time to worry about lack of water is when the glaciers are advancing as the dam is filling, but at 5 to 10% of total water even this is minor.

The UNESCO report of the International Hydrological Programme of 1996, Variations of Snow and Ice in the past and at present on a Global and Regional Scale had a paper by V. M. Kotlyakov, The Future of Glaciers under the Expected Climate Warming, stating

"With the further progress of warming or stabilization of the present climate…The degradation of the extrapolar glaciation of the Earth will be apparent in rising ocean level already by the year 2050, and there will be a drastic rise of the ocean thereafter caused by the deglaciation-derived runoff (see Table 11 ). This period will last from 200 to 300 years. The extrapolar glaciation of the Earth will be decaying at rapid, catastrophic rates—its total area will shrink from 500,000 to 100,000 km² by the year 2350. Glaciers will survive only in the mountains of inner Alaska, on some Arctic archipelagos, within Patagonian ice sheets, in the Karakoram Mountains, in the Himalayas, in some regions of Tibet and on the highest mountain peaks in the temperature [temperate?] latitudes."

Note that 500, 000 km² is the total area of ALL extrapolar glaciers throughout the world. With unabated global warming, shrinkage to 100,000 km² takes place by 2350 (not 2035), and even then glaciers will survive in the Himalayas.

If anyone can be considered an 'authority' on the Himalayas it is Jack Ives, Professor Emeritus, Environmental Science, University of California and Davis Honorary Research Professor, Carleton University, Ottawa. Ives has over 180 publications, scientific papers, and books to his credit, and was Founder and Editor (1968-1980) of Arctic and Alpine Research journal, and Founder and Editor (1980-2000) of Mountain Research and Development journal.

His work 'Himalayan Perceptions' was described by Kumar Mainali, Editor of the Himalayan Journal of Sciences, as “probably the single most influential monograph ever published on Himalayan environmental issues” (INASP Newsletter, Spring 2006). The section in both editions entitled 'Some current myths on a Himalayan scale' was largely reproduced in a paper published in the peer-reviewed Himalayan Journal of Sciences 2005 entitled 'Himalayan misconceptions and distortions: What are the facts? Himalayan Delusions: Who’s kidding who and why — Science at the service of media, politics and the development agencies.'

In this he writes (note: this was 2005):

"…the following examples are offered because the degree of misinformation appears to be both extensive, widespread, and continuing…Reporting on global warming, the world economy, international terrorism, or almost any disaster has become comparable to the campaign speeches politicians tend to make at election time. It has also been understood for several decades now that ‘green’ movements have felt compelled to exaggerate in order to compete for attention with the possible bias of well-financed campaigns of big business and industry. Regardless, the examples of ‘latter-day myths’ are set forth because their pervasiveness tends to clutter the sustainable development landscape and perpetuate the Himalayan scale of uncertainty…

…The Times of London (21 July 2003), reporting on an international meeting held at the University of Birmingham, noted that ‘Himalayan glaciers could vanish within 40 years because of global warming . . . 500 million people in countries like India could also be at increased risk of drought and starvation.’ Syed Hasnain is quoted as affirming that ‘the glaciers of the region [Central Indian Himalaya] could be gone by 2035’.

According to Barry (1992: 45) the average temperature decrease with height (environmental lapse rate) is about 6ºC/km in the free atmosphere. The dry adiabatic lapse rate (DALR) is 9.8ºC/km. If it is assumed that the equilibrium line altitude (comparable with the ‘snow line’) in the Central Himalaya is about 5,000 masl and it will need to rise above 7,000 m if all the glaciers are to be eliminated, then the mean temperature increase needed to effect this change would be about 12–18ºC. Given that degree of global warming, summers in Calcutta would be a little uncomfortable.

As indicated earlier, myths tend to be self-perpetuating. In practice their longevity is often encouraged by vested interests of one form or another."

In a comment he made to me, Jack Ives stated

"The silliness of writing that all the Himalayan glaciers could melt by 2035 should be self-evident: it would likely cause an undergraduate in physical geography or geology to laugh."

So Ives, in 2005, showed that the 2035 date was an outright lie and deliberate media manipulation, and he showed it as such in the peer-reviewed literature. IPCC decided to go for dodgy WWF grey literature instead, in spite of the fact that even an undergraduate would think it a joke.

ZDB "There seems to be debate regarding their imminence, but not that they are melting. It's going to happen at some point, and we're the prime instigator of this. It's a key signifier of Global Warming."

'we're the prime instigator of this. It's a key signifier of Global Warming' - that's a key signifier of begging the question.

Even this lot have given up trying to pretend that now, after the BEST figures. Have you even actually looked at the temperature data?the BEST figures, you nearly made me choke on my coffee! Even Muller was last seen scuttling for cover!

What on earth the Guardian is doing by stating by 2040-50 is almost beyond belief..

They've realised that the error, Pachauri's denial of the error and subsequent lying about the IPCC process, and his smearing of those who exposed the error, have hugely damaged the credibility of the IPCC.

Actually there is nothing like 500,000 km^2 of extrapolar glaciers in the World whatever UNESCO might claim. That figure is actually for all glaciers in the World except Antarctica and Greenland. Most of those glaciers are not "extrapolar" by any reasonable definition. There is something like 100,000 km^2 in Central Asia and about 25,000 km^2 in South America. All other tropical or temperate glaciers are practically negligible. The rest are in places like Alaska, Baffins Land, Ellesmere Land, Iceland, Svalbard, Franz Joseph's Land, Novaya Zemlya, Severnaya Zemlya and South Georgia.

"Why are the glaciers receding? We have had less than 1C increase in global temperature over the last 150 years, so what mechanisms are making the glaciers recede?"

1 C warmer means that the altitude of the equilibrum line will rise by about 150 meters. For most glaciers this is a significant amount. A smaller accumulation area means that the glacier front will recede, and since the glacier snout is often fairly narrow and thin it can easily recede from several hundred meters to a couple of kilometers as a result. The effect will be most dramatic where ice from a large accumulation area is funneled through a narrow outlet glacier. Hence the popularity of "climate pilgrimages" to Ilulissat and Jakobshavns Isbrae, where ice from 15% of the entire Greenland Icecap is calved into a fjord only a few miles wide.

I think they're just asking why the CO2 death spiral seems to have never happened in the geological history of the planet, no matter the CO2 concentration. It's almost as if the climate has hundreds if not thousands of factors of which a minor trace gas is but one. I'm still hoping we go full tropic and get rid of this life inhibiting ice. There is no more a lifeless desert anywhere on this planet than Antartica. Do you wish for an ice-free future too, ZDB?

Retreating glaciers area sign of temperature REDUCTION as they are formed from snowfall and as temperatures decrease, so does snowfall. In a warming world, a glacier would gain more mass than it loses and the terminus of the glacier would advance. In a cooling world, with the glacier losing more mass than it gains, its terminus will retreat.

I read BH and WUWT daily and have done for years. I kinda like reading Zed (in a masochistic way) as I see a style of argument in there that was once shown in a documentary I saw years ago about how Moonies were brain-washed.

With that in mind, I am increasingly of the opinion that, unless they attended the same Moonies course, Zed on BH is R.Gates on WUWT. As a theory, it probably has more going for it than AGW.

George Black for OnEarth, part of the Guardian Environment Network guardian.co.uk, Friday 18 November 2011 09.53 GMT Article history

OnEarth? What on Earth?? ... Mind you, I've always wondered if the graun editorial had been taken over by little green men or alien greenies.

Most of the world will accept it. Those who won't, won't, he said. "Some find us inconvenient. We will always be opposed by vested interests, and if people still want to attack us, there's nothing we can do about it." With that, he apologized for not being able to continue the conversation: he had to join an important conference call with the vice-chairs of the IPCC -- no doubt, his press officer said, to review some last-minute questions about the upcoming report. Pachauri rose to shake hands in farewell, Olympian calm intact.

Honestly, butter wouldn't melt, poor old Pachauri - always the innocent victim, the little guy, the poor Indian railway engineer............... hounded by those evil disbelieving and wicked men of the heterodoxy.

What a puke inducing article this is.

What a load of unscientific drivel - some of the Himalayan glaciers may be melting, some are not.

But the reasons are complex and manifold and it is nothing to do with MMCO2. It is, to do with Monsoonal winds, soot, massive lower slope deforestation.

And in any case [despite man's best efforts to disrupt it] the hydrological cycle is basically intact, it will still precipitate in the Himalayas the rivers will still flow - there will be changes but these are mainly man made alterations in LAND USE.

The graun = endless pap and Pachauri needs to go......... hang on a minute, no! The IPCC needs to be put to bed and let it be an eternal sleep.

Assuming there are fact checkers and editors at the Guardian, who should have known about the 2350 date, then we must accept that repors such as this are blatant manipulation of public opinion.

The question is for whose benefit we are being manipulated. For the benefit of l those who report record profits from businesses that normally would not make any money in an open unrigged market. Vestas, the Danish wind turbine maker is pulling in money at record rates. To increase its profitability it plans to move production to China- so much for green european jobs- and continue selling turbines to Europe. We, the consumerst of us are being convinced via terrorising reports to accept meekly the taxes that are necessary to pay the extortionate Feed In Tarrifs. Talk about shills!!!

A related link at the Gaudrain article, showing Pachauri's reaction to a challenge to the 2035 prediction in Nov. 2009, is here:

"We have a very clear idea of what is happening. I don't know why the minister is supporting this unsubstantiated research. It is an extremely arrogant statement."

Pachauri dismissed the report saying it was not "peer reviewed" and had few "scientific citations". "With the greatest of respect this guy [Vijay Kumar Raina, the geologist who wrote the contrary report] retired years ago and I find it totally baffling that he comes out and throws out everything that has been established years ago."

From the Daily Mail 24 Jan. 2010: "The scientist [Dr Murari Lal] behind the bogus claim in a Nobel Prize-winning UN report that Himalayan glaciers will have melted by 2035 last night admitted it was included purely to put political pressure on world leaders."